The MUA has had a significant win in respect of the offshore oil and gas Enterprise Agreement (EA) campaign and the application for approval of another MUA “Job Security” agreement.

FULL BENCH OF FAIR WORK QUASHES DOF AND SMIT NON-UNION AGREEMENTS IN MASSIVE WIN FOR MUA OFFSHORE JOB SECURITY CAMPAIGN

Deputy National Secretary Will Tracey reports that this afternoon the Full Bench of Fair Work quashed both the DOF and SMIT non-union agreements that the MUA had been trying to overturn on appeal after they were registered in the first few months of last year. We have been in this legal fight for some 10 months and today’s decision is a significant win for our campaign to continue to push the MUA “Job Security” agreements across the offshore.

Later today we wrote to both DOF and Smit management requesting bargaining meetings to commence discussions on a new agreement. We have requested a reply within 7 days.

The significance of this legal win cannot be understated as we push to secure our rights to work in this industry. A campaign we have been in for well over 4 years now. This is another step toward our complete job security in the Australian offshore oil and gas industry.

Unfortunately the Full Bench found in favour of Mermaid Marine and have kept that agreement live. We can inform our membership that the Mermaid Marine non-union agreement has become an issue we have raised in the Interest Based Bargaining we are engaged in with that company currently as we seek resolution to the last non-union agreement in our area of coverage in the offshore. We are confident of some sort of solution here but cannot say anymore because of the nature of those discussions.

MUA AND FUGRO MOVE TO REGISTER MUA “JOB SECURITY” AGREEMENT IN FAIR WORK

In the last week the MUA and Fugro have endorsed and made application to Fair Work to register an offshore agreement for Fugro that is in the same terms as the agreements reached by our members at Programmed, AOS and OSM. That is, we now have a MUA “Job Security” agreement at Fugro. We will notify when it is approved by Fair Work.

We can now report that the MUA has continued to work through the process of Interest Based Bargaining (IBB) with both Mermaid Marine and Go Offshore to attempt to rescue an EA from what has been a fairly hostile process to date. Both companies have put out numerous substandard non-union agreements which have been knocked back every time by our membership at each company.

The Mermaid agreement is very close to completion and progress has been very positive given the place where we started.

Go Offshore has only had the IBB training day and the meetings will commence in earnest on the week of February 16th.